The first openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender clergy in Judaism were ordained as rabbis and/or cantors in the second half of the 20th century.
Allen Bennett became the first openly gay rabbi in the United States in 1978. [1]
Lionel Blue was the first British rabbi to publicly declare himself as gay, which he did in 1980. [2]
Admission to rabbinical seminary and ordination for openly LGBT people began in 1984, when the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the seminary of Reconstructionist Judaism, voted to accept and ordain rabbis without regard to their sexual orientation. The same year the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College admitted Jane Rachel Litman, who is openly bisexual, and she was ordained in 1989. In 1985 the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College graduated and ordained Deborah Brin, an out lesbian. [3] [4]
In 1988 Stacy Offner became the first openly lesbian rabbi hired by a mainstream Jewish congregation—Shir Tikvah Congregation of Minneapolis, a Reform Jewish congregation. [5] [6] [7] [8]
Leo Baeck College in London admitted its first openly LGBT students in 1984. Two openly lesbian rabbis were ordained in 1989: Rabbi Sheila Shulman and Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah. [9]
In 1989, at the strong urging of the UAHC (Union of American Hebrew Congregations) now known as Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), the seminary of the Reform movement, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, changed its admission requirements to allow openly lesbian and gay people to join the student body. Four open LGBTQ applicants were then accepted as students, Leslie Bergson, Peter Kessler, Stephen Roberts and Burt Schuman. In 1989, consistent with its admission policies of its seminary, the UAHC (now known as URJ) announced a national policy declaring lesbian and gay Jews to be full and equal members of the religious community. Its principal rabbinic body, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which is the largest and oldest rabbinical organization in North America, officially endorsed a report of its own Ad Hoc Committee on Homosexuality and the Rabbinate. [10] This position paper urged that "all rabbis, regardless of sexual orientation, be accorded the opportunity to fulfill the sacred vocation that they have chosen." [10] The committee endorsed the view that "all Jews are religiously equal regardless of their sexual orientation." [10]
Rabbi Steven Greenberg has been described as the first and only gay rabbi with a rabbinic ordination from the Orthodox rabbinical seminary (of Yeshiva University (RIETS)). He is described as the first openly gay Orthodox-ordained Jewish rabbi, since he publicly disclosed he is gay in an article in the Israeli newspaper Maariv in 1999 [11] and participated in a 2001 documentary film about gay men and women raised in the Orthodox Jewish world. [12] However, some Orthodox Jews, including many rabbis, dispute his status as an Orthodox rabbi. [13]
In 2003 Reuben Zellman became the first openly transgender person accepted to the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, [14] where he was ordained in 2010. [15] [16] Elliot Kukla, who came out as transgender six months before his ordination in 2006, was the first openly transgender person to be ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. [14]
In 2005, Eli Cohen became the first openly gay man to be ordained a rabbi by the Jewish Renewal Movement. [17] [18]
In 2006, Chaya Gusfield and Rabbi Lori Klein, both ordained in America, became the first openly lesbian rabbis ordained by the Jewish Renewal movement. Also in 2006, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, the body for Conservative Judaism, adopted two majority opinions, one allowing the ordination of LGBT clergy, as well as the blessing of same-sex unions, and lifting prohibitions on most (but not all) same-sex conduct (specifically not same-sex anal sex) and the other majority opinion retaining traditional opinions. In response, the two primary seminaries for Conservative Judaism, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, started allowing openly LGBT students. Also in 2006, Chaya Gusfield and Rabbi Lori Klein became the two first openly lesbian rabbis ordained by the Jewish Renewal movement. They were both ordained at the same time in January 2006. [19]
In 2007 Rabbi Toba Spitzer became the first openly lesbian or gay person chosen to head a rabbinical association in the United States when she was elected president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association at the group's annual convention, held in Scottsdale, Arizona. [20]
Also in 2007, Jalda Rebling, born in Amsterdam and now living in Germany, became the first openly lesbian cantor ordained by the Jewish Renewal movement. [21]
In April 2009, Rabbi Ron Yosef became the first Israeli orthodox rabbi to come out, by appearing on Uvda ("Fact"), Israel's leading investigative television program. [22] Yosef remains in his position as a pulpit Rabbi in Netanya. [23] Yosef received death threats in the year leading up to the 2009 Tel Aviv gay centre shooting. [24] Yosef said that he hopes that his coming out and his visibility as a homosexual rabbi in the orthodox community will be equivalent to participating in the pride parade, which he and the organization he founded (Hod) oppose.
Also in 2009 Juval Porat, who is openly gay, graduated from Abraham Geiger College and thus became the first person to be trained as a cantor in Germany since the Holocaust. [25] [26] In 2010 he became the cantor for Temple Beth Chayim Chadashim, a Los Angeles Reform synagogue. [26]
In May 2010, Anna Maranta became the first lesbian rabbi to be privately ordained in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She serves The Glebe Minyan, a post-denominational Jewish Renewal community. [27]
In May 2011, Rachel Isaacs became the first openly lesbian rabbi ordained by the Conservative movement's Jewish Theological Seminary ("JTS"), which occurred in May 2011. [28] She transferred to JTS from the Reform movement's Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in her third year of rabbinical school. [29]
Also in 2011, the bisexual rights activist Debra Kolodny was ordained as a rabbi by the Jewish Renewal movement and hired as the rabbi for congregation P'nai Or of Portland, Oregon. [30] [31]
Also in 2011, Sandra Lawson became the first openly gay African-American and the first African-American admitted to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. [32] She was ordained and thus became the first openly gay, female, black rabbi in the world in 2018. [33] [34]
Emily Aviva Kapor, who had been ordained privately by a "Conservadox" rabbi in 2005, began living as a woman in 2012, thus becoming the first openly transgender female rabbi. [35]
In 2013, Rabbi Deborah Waxman was elected as the president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. [36] [37] As the President, she is believed to be the first woman and first lesbian to lead a Jewish congregational union, and the first female rabbi and first lesbian to lead a Jewish seminary; the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College is both a congregational union and a seminary. [36] [38]
Also in 2013, Rabbi Jason Klein became the first openly gay man chosen to head a national rabbinical association of one of the major Jewish denominations in the United States when he was elected president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association at the group's annual convention, held in New Orleans. [39]
In 2014, Mikie Goldstein became the first openly gay man to be ordained as a Conservative Jewish rabbi. [40] [41] Later that year he became the Israeli Conservative movement's first openly gay congregational rabbi with his installation as spiritual leader of its synagogue in Rehovot (Congregation Adat Shalom-Emanuel). [42] He was born in Britain and studied for the rabbinate in New York. [40]
Also in 2014, Nehirim's first retreat for LGBT rabbis, rabbinic pastors, cantors, and students was held in San Francisco. [43] [44]
In March 2015, Rabbi Denise Eger became the first openly gay president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which is the largest and oldest rabbinical organization in North America. [45] [46]
In November 2015 Abby Stein came out as transgender and thus became the first openly transgender woman to have been ordained by an Orthodox institution, having received her rabbinical degree in 2012, from an Ultra-Orthodox Hasidic school. To date, she is also thus the only female rabbi to have been ordained by an Ultra-Orthodox institution. She was ordained before transitioning; however, afterwards, as of 2020, she had re-embraced her title as rabbi, and was working in many capacities as a rabbi. [47] [48]
In 2019, Daniel Atwood, a gay rabbinical student who was denied ordination by New York’s Yeshivat Chovevei Torah despite the school previously saying it would ordain him, was welcomed into the rabbinate in Jerusalem, breaking a longstanding taboo against homosexuality in the Orthodox community. He was the first openly gay Orthodox person to be ordained as a rabbi, and was ordained by the rabbi Daniel Landes. [49] [50] Atwood became engaged to his male partner in 2018. [51]
Together, Reconstructionist Judaism, Jewish Renewal, Reform Judaism, and Conservative Judaism make up 76% of Jewish Americans who belong to a synagogue. [52] The remainder of synagogue-belonging Jews belong to either Orthodox Judaism, at 21%, who do not ordain openly LGBT Jews, and a remaining 3% belonging to either an unaffiliated synagogue or another Jewish denomination that may or may not ordain openly LGBT Jews.
In October 2023, The Forward reported about Shua Brick, “experts say that Brick is the first openly gay rabbi to serve on the clergy of an Orthodox synagogue in the U.S.”, [53] explaining that Brick “runs the youth program, leads Torah study for adults, and fills in when the senior rabbi is out of town” at Beth Jacob Congregation in Oakland, California, where he started coming out as gay to members of the congregation over a year prior to October 2023. He was ordained by Yeshiva University. [53]
Rebecca Alpert; Sue Levi Elwell; Shirley Idelson, eds. (2001). Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0813529165.
Conservative Judaism, also known as Masorti Judaism, is a Jewish religious movement that regards the authority of Jewish law and tradition as emanating primarily from the assent of the people through the generations, more than from divine revelation. It therefore views Jewish law, or Halakha, as both binding and subject to historical development. The conservative rabbinate employs modern historical-critical research, rather than only traditional methods and sources, and lends great weight to its constituency, when determining its stance on matters of practice. The movement considers its approach as the authentic and most appropriate continuation of Halakhic discourse, maintaining both fealty to received forms and flexibility in their interpretation. It also eschews strict theological definitions, lacking a consensus in matters of faith and allowing great pluralism.
The subject of homosexuality and Judaism dates back to the Torah. The book of Vayikra (Leviticus) is traditionally regarded as classifying sexual intercourse between males as a to'eivah that can be subject to capital punishment by the current Sanhedrin under halakha.
Reconstructionist Judaism is a Jewish movement based on the concepts developed by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1881–1983) that views Judaism as a progressively evolving civilization rather than just a religion. The movement originated as a semi-organized stream within Conservative Judaism, developed between the late 1920s and the 1940s before seceding in 1955, and established a rabbinical college in 1967. Reconstructionist Judaism is recognized by many scholars as one of the five major streams of Judaism in America alongside Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Humanistic.
Women in Judaism have affected the course of Judaism over millenia. Their role is reflected in the Hebrew Bible, the Oral Law, by custom, and by cultural factors. Although the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic literature present various female role models, religious law treats women in specific ways. According to a 2017 study by the Pew Research Center, women account for 52% of the worldwide Jewish population.
The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) is a Conservative Jewish education organization in New York City, New York. It is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism and a center for academic scholarship in Jewish studies. The Jewish Theological Seminary Library is one of the most significant collections of Judaica in the world.
Jewish Renewal is a Jewish religious movement originating in the 20th century that endeavors to reinvigorate modern Judaism with Kabbalistic, Hasidic, and musical practices. Specifically, it seeks to reintroduce the "ancient Judaic traditions of mysticism and meditation, gender equality and ecstatic prayer" to synagogue services. It is distinct from the baal teshuva movement of return to Orthodox Judaism.
Keshet Rabbis is an organization of Conservative/Masorti rabbis, cofounded in 2003 by Menachem Creditor, which holds that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Jews should be embraced as full, open members of all Conservative congregations and institutions. Based on its understanding of Jewish sources and Jewish values, it asserts that LGBT Jews may fully participate in community life and achieve positions of professional and lay leadership.
The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) is a Jewish seminary in Wyncote, Pennsylvania. It is the only seminary affiliated with Reconstructionist Judaism. It is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. RRC has an enrollment of approximately 80 students in rabbinic and other graduate programs.
Jewish feminism is a movement that seeks to make the religious, legal, and social status of Jewish women equal to that of Jewish men in Judaism. Feminist movements, with varying approaches and successes, have opened up within all major branches of the Jewish religion.
Temple Beth Israel is a Reconstructionist synagogue located at 1175 East 29th Avenue in Eugene, Oregon, in the United States. Founded in the early 1930s as a Conservative congregation, Beth Israel was for many decades the only synagogue in Eugene.
Beth Israel Congregation is a Conservative synagogue located at 385 Pottstown Pike in Upper Uwchlan Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The congregation was founded in Coatesville in 1904 as Kesher Israel by Eastern European immigrants, and formally chartered as "Beth Israel" in 1916. It constructed its first building in 1923, and expanded it after World War II.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) affirming denominations in Judaism are Jewish religious groups that welcome LGBTQ members and do not consider homosexuality to be a sin. They include both entire Jewish denominations, as well as individual synagogues. Some are composed mainly of non-LGBT members and also have specific programs to welcome LGBT people, while others are composed mainly of LGBT members.
Same-sex marriage in Judaism has been a subject of debate within Jewish denominations. The traditional view among Jews is to regard same-sex relationships as categorically forbidden by the Torah. This remains the current view of Orthodox Judaism.
Linda Joy Holtzman is an American rabbi and author. In 1979, she became one of the first women in the United States to serve as the presiding rabbi of a synagogue, and the first woman to serve as a rabbi for a solely Conservative congregation, when she was hired by Beth Israel Congregation of Chester County, which was then located in Coatesville, Pennsylvania.
This is a timeline of women rabbis:
This is a timeline of LGBT Jewish history, which consists of events at the intersection of Judaism and queer people.
Sandra Lawson is an American rabbi and the first director of Racial Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Reconstructing Judaism. She previously served as Associate Chaplain for Jewish Life at Elon University. Lawson became the first openly gay, female, and black rabbi in the world in 2018. She is a veteran, vegan, sociologist, personal trainer, food activist, weightlifter, author and musician.
Elizabeth (Liz) Bolton is a rabbi, feminist, and activist. Hired in 2013 by Reconstructionist synagogue Or Haneshamah, she is Ottawa’s first female and openly gay rabbi. In the late 1980’s, she led efforts to address the exclusion of women from the cantorate in Canada.
Anna hosts Seudah Shlishit study sessions on the 3rd Shabbat of each month. Study the weekly Torah portion over coffee, tea, and treats with her, followed by a potluck dinner and havdallah.
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